Recovery College Team Grant

To support the development of Recovery College YVR, program organizers were successful in securing a Team Grant from the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. The study “Learning from the Experiences of Recovery College Peer Educators and Program Organizers to Inform the Implementation of a Transformative Model of Mental Health and Substance Use Care at Vancouver Coastal Health”.

We invited peer educators and program organizers from 29 RCs across Canada to take part in a web-based survey, with the possibility of follow up Zoom interview, to tell us about their experiences working at their college. The goal was to find out what has helped their program to prepare, support, and retain peer educators. We will use this information to design processes and training materials to support peer educators with Recovery College YVR which we will also share freely with the broader Recovery College community.

In addition to the core research team, we assembled a Peer Advisory to help with project design, validating the findings and contributing to knowledge translation. To bring the group together we provided the advisors with skill building opportunities in research methodology and knowledge translation.

Initial findings have been themed into four categories (Inclusivity, Connectedness, Adaptability, and Empowerment) which we will explore in more depth to create knowledge translation materials to share back to our research participants, funders, and the broader peer support worker community.

The project runs until the end of December 2024.